September 24, 2007

ThePudding: Targeted Advertising Comes to Phone Calls

Mark Hendrickson

42 comments »

ThePudding provides free, PC-based phone calls to anywhere in the US or Canada. The big catch: computers in Fremont, CA will eavesdrop on and analyze every word of your conversation so they can serve up advertisements tailored to the topic at hand.

Users initiate a phone call simply by visiting ThePudding’s website (currently in private beta) and entering a phone number into the browser. After the call begins, advertisements tailored to the conversation will begin to appear on screen. The NYT has a good screenshot of what these advertisements will look like here.

Phone conversations are monitored only by computers, not actual human beings. The company also does not record any of the conversations or log any of the topics discussed. Therefore, advertisements are tailored to each particular phone call and not to trends in users’ calling behavior.

ThePudding has already experienced a fair amount of backlash, with some calling it a terrible idea because users will not be comfortable enough with allowing their phone conversations to be monitored. There is also the concern that niche users will not be swayed by this completely free offering, because they already pay very little for services like Skype. However, ThePudding may be a potential acquisition target for Skype itself, which may be interested in developing an ad-based revenue model.

Despite the criticism, ThePudding does not seem all that different to me from a privacy perspective than Gmail. If users are comfortable with letting computers analyze their email messages and display targeted advertisements alongside them, why won’t they be comfortable with allowing the same thing with their verbal communications? Perhaps there is an important psychological factor at play here that will always make people unwilling to let strangers monitor what they actually speak. But consumers are caring less and less about how much information they provide online about themselves to unverified companies, so it doesn’t seem implausible to me that with time many people will overcome their anxieties about this type of service.

While ThePudding is currently only available through the web browser on PCs, the company has plans to expand into mobile (and to display advertisements on the screens of handheld devices).

ThePudding is a service of Pudding Media, which was founded by two Israelis with experience in military intelligence and telecommunications. The company is based in San Jose, California.

Sphere It

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Look past the pudding at Call the Cloud

September 26th, 2007 at 9:31 am

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Comments

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webmaster

September 24th, 2007 at 8:51 am

this is mad. The 1982 is comming…
brendan

September 24th, 2007 at 8:55 am

Re: webmaster..its coming and you’ve still not mastered the spell checker
Darnell Clayton

September 24th, 2007 at 8:56 am

Gee, talk about user privacy. Gmail (as well as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail to my knowledge) all scan your email in order to display relevant content (with Yahoo being the worst with those annoying banner ads).

Scanning my text is fine. But scanning my voice sounds a little bit creepy. What’s next, retina scans to go along with free computers?

I’d rather pay Skype (or GrandCentral, which I have to thank you for introducing me towards on your site) than to have a company scan my voice.

Note: Hey Mark, didn’t Google try to do something similar with Google Talk?
Sav

September 24th, 2007 at 9:04 am

This is awesome for people that can converse in a language other than English. I bet the computers only support English speech recognition.
Heretic

September 24th, 2007 at 9:07 am

So are contextual ads their breakthrough technology that makes my conversations fun an interesting? The website doesn’t say. If it is, isn’t that a bit deceptive? They look like a company that will get snatched up in a jiffy if the tech even only mostly works so maybe they don’t care too much about distribution.
Sin Jin Lee

September 24th, 2007 at 9:38 am

this is neil strauss and the game creepy.

email communication by its nature requires a more deliberate and distilled thought process. Phone calls on the other hand take serendipitous turns that tend to make grandmothers wince;) No one likes to see their ugly be reflected back to them-especially on a computer screen.
Sin Jin Lee

September 24th, 2007 at 9:39 am

hey brendan

i thought i was the only one anal about spell checking!
ELS

September 24th, 2007 at 9:50 am

Let me guess, they’re funded by In-Q-Tel
John

September 24th, 2007 at 10:10 am

Its not 1982, its 1984 and why would you ever trust anyone with the background in foreign military intelligence and telecommunication service. This screams to me as being a project backed if not initiated by Mossad. Someone from the federal authorities should investigate it.
Steve

September 24th, 2007 at 10:15 am

Do they really think anyone would agree to have their private conversations recorded? I think most people would rather just pay for extra minutes on their cell phone plans. I realize that it’s just computers analyzing speech patterns, but I imagine the whole audio file is stored somewhere. In this day in age, especially with the Patriot Act, this is a very scary thing.
Paul Taylor

September 24th, 2007 at 10:18 am

This MUST be a joke, it’s simply too inane to imagine people going to work everyday and seriously trying to make this thing function. And to the investors that tossed their money down this s-hole, well, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn that might be of interest.
marshal sandler

September 24th, 2007 at 10:35 am

If you have nothing to hide it’s ok ! I we had listened to the Mossad, we
wouldn’t be in Iraq! Every one has plots today, don’t like the service don’t subscribe!
cweeb

September 24th, 2007 at 10:44 am

to #10, the power of FREE is amazing, people will do this, including me
Farhan

September 24th, 2007 at 10:45 am

I think the company tested this idea previously under megafreecalls.com domain, as that domain was up for some time and did exactly what ThePudding does with almost the same ads screen.

I had tried them out then, but the voice quality wasnt that good and there was a lot of latency at times.

I’d agree with Steve, I wouldn’t use such a product where I know that my conversations are screened and could potentially be recorded.
Invent this

September 24th, 2007 at 10:47 am

“ThePudding” startup sounds very dangerous and unethical to people.
No one used Google Talk or Evedropping phone technology.
My friend give me example….

Let say accuser went to court… All sudden, someone violated court evidence. They put play tape and accuse accuser for wrong doing. What would accuser do to protect himself even if that playtape isn’t his words?

The juriors will find him guilty less than second. It’s easy to pretext and accuse someone with false tape.

I think inventors should invent telephone polygraph playbacks technology that can trace conspirators or Audio modifiers.

It’s very hard to make one and it can waste of time. It’s great to trace old Enron phone calls.
Alexander van Elsas

September 24th, 2007 at 10:48 am

There has been some comments on privacy matters earlier, I won’t do that as well, but from a user perspective this is truly a service no one will be waiting for. Getting advertisement into your private space this way will not work. Even though you are using the Internet to make the call (which is public domain, with advertisement), psychologically you are talking one on one to someone else, and you don’t want to be seeing advertisement there. And the competition is fierce enough to make the prices of calling tarifs drop even further. The financial benefit will therefore not be large enough.
cweeb

September 24th, 2007 at 10:58 am

almost a week an no TC40 videos, what gives ?????????
Dumb idea.

September 24th, 2007 at 10:58 am

Even Sneaky guys can Copy your voice with drag drop. Something like this.

http://images.memoclic.com/gif/win/auda_18.gif
http://www.audiomidi.com/about.....io_lrg.jpg
http://img127.imageshack.us/im.....or2fs5.png

Inventors need to make polygraph playbacks that can trace date, time, and space. I need that technology for business. So I can fired male sexual harasser or anti-business men ( feminist ).

Many bosses need that technology.
No!

September 24th, 2007 at 10:59 am

i wouldn’t use this if they payed me to use it.
If you can afford a computer and a DSL connection, how in the hell cant you afford a .02 cent per minute call via Skype or jajah? (free if you both users use the service)
Pex

September 24th, 2007 at 11:09 am

When company record people’s conversion or voice. It’s violates — “U.S. Constitution: Fourth Amendment ”

I was reading this article very clear.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ”

If ThePudding violate something like that. The company will go out of business and shutdown its assets. VC will lose tons of money where they invested “ThePudding” services.

Citizens hope “ThePudding” does not land in U.S soil anytime soon. They should launch it in their homeland.
MIKE is idiot!

September 24th, 2007 at 11:20 am

I like ask the military founders… Please don’t use this evedrop thing to against someone you don’t like base on religion & politics.

My dollar bill says “In God We trust”. We got freedom of religion. We have right to choose any religion we wish to worship freedly.

I think Mike Arrington doesn’t believe in God, Santa claus, Easter bunny, tooth fairy.

Mike Arrington is Scrooge and dumbass atheist who refuse to believe religion. He hate kids too. He won’t send christmas present to them. He would invest startups.

Idiot!!! Childrens are startups too. Mike!!! Send them money on christmas.
Eyal

September 24th, 2007 at 11:22 am

ישראלים יקרים - אכן כן
Jason Sperske

September 24th, 2007 at 11:25 am

The problem with products like these is that there is very little incentive to be forthcoming and honest about their data retention policies. I can see how dangerous it would be to draw value from recorded conversations (considering the legal muddy watter they are wading through) but simply retaining the information (even for “research only” purposes) and waiting for the legal climate to change not only makes business sense but even passes as morally acceptable in the eyes of people putting up millions of dollars. The problem is even if the company fails, the fact that computing power has progressed to the point where this is even possible means the cat is out of the bag. The only way to combat this is by careful monitoring and the efforts of corporate/government watchdog groups like the EFF. It sounds like an impressive technology (AdSense works because Google can search millions of advertising opportunities in less than a second on a query that changes a few times a day (text of a web page or email), this would have to identify the query, search and return something meaningful in a time window that might only be a few seconds wide. It seems like a better product at this time would be more of a conversational assistant that presented pertinent information from multiple sources (like Wikipedia or Answers.com) on topic you were actively discussing and even followed up via email or IM with more information. This at least would go down smother with people who might want to have the power of “Google”/”Ask”/”The Pudding” if they were holding a conference call with members of a team. Just an idea which in all likelihood is too nerdy to be practical (I tend to do that :P)
Nicholas Macias

September 24th, 2007 at 11:28 am

These comments are just as surreal as the name of the company, The Pudding. Is there a version of Godwin’s Law for invoking the Easter Bunny? (@20)
Mark Hendrickson

September 24th, 2007 at 11:31 am

#20 = instant classic
Nag

September 24th, 2007 at 11:34 am

hey Mark,
That was a very good point between Gmails ads and thepudding.com ads.

there is no difference between text or voice.. as both the mediums are exposed.
@all Dumbasses

September 24th, 2007 at 11:38 am

Damn… Some of you and TC athiest people need stop attacking and burn dollar bill.

I saw image of Mike holding cigar and burn money… What is with you anyways? You can’t just burn that money.

Its…. Its….

Oh, Forget it. I’ll come back with another idea.
dan

September 24th, 2007 at 11:50 am

this will never work, they will never get user traction to create a distribution pool worth advertisers time. you need scale, then advertisers take note. this will never scale because no one would trust it. not to mention the fact they haven’t a clue on marketing, should have launched the free service first, get users, then launch this audio spybot ad platform. as it stands now, they would be lucky to get 100,000 US based users in one years time. and even that is not interesting to big marketers. this reminds me of the seven bladed knife invention from years back, who needs it?
Textbook Case

September 24th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

I want to use it just because it upsets people so much. My email content is waaay more sensitive than my phone content. And I use Gmail, and I get me emails parsed, and I get ads for them.

It’s no different at all. There’s no recording.

Also, what’s with all the non-native-English-speaking hostility? If these guys weren’t Israeli would all this be such a big deal? I mean it’s the Mossad now? I’m pretty sure all Israelis are ex-military.

This is turning out to be a fully classic set of comments.
Textbook Case

September 24th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

Actually Gmail is worse, they have recorded copies of all my email. Forgot about that.
phenom

September 24th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

What abt privacy…..their logo looks similar to Cisco Systems.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Stan Oleynick

September 24th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

I actually had the same idea for quite some time now but never really did anything with it. Since it’s already out there, one thing that I wanted to suggest to the guys behind this project is to also analyze the voice tones with which the person is mentioning something you will serve relevant ads against. That way if a person seems excited about the product you can go ahead and serve the relevant ad and if not hold it… if a person says “I hate the freaking iPhone” but you serve an iPhone ad he will get even more pissed, know what I mean?

It is also good to analyze strings of sentences and serve ads based on the whole sentence not just a single word that way the system can see whether the product is talked about positively or negatively before serving ads, if it’s mentioned in negative light you can serve a competitors ad, etc… this idea has tons of potential and different nuances!

If people behind this project will be reading this, feel free to email me at: stan.oleynick (at) gmail.com and I will be more than happy to send you some more observations and tips.
Anatoly

September 24th, 2007 at 9:17 pm

@Stan — Ideally, I’ll say something like I hate these freaking ads, and it will stop serving them to me.
james

September 25th, 2007 at 9:36 am

I will never use this product nor I will ever support any eavesdropping technology. All our phone calls IN US are already traced by the Israeli company, Amdocs. Just research it for yourself. Using this product only promotes domestic spying technology and helps grow and fund it.

Please stop promoting this company!
Shai Berger

September 26th, 2007 at 9:48 am

When you think about the implications of running your phone calls through the internet cloud, with its massive processing power and terabytes of info, there is a much bigger picture here.

Today, we see the advertising as simply an intrusion - a way to pay the piper. But what if Pudding could really deliver useful information to us during a phone call?

Once we become comfortable that the cloud is a 3rd party on our call, a world of possibilities opens up.

Everyone has brought up the Gmail analogy: Gmail exposes me to ads in exchange for free email service. But, I don’t use Gmail to save money. In fact, I have email options available to me that are zero-cost *and* ad-free. I use Gmail because I like having all of my email in the cloud, available from any computer and searchable. Gmail makes my email experience better.

Cloud-routing of phone calls is ultimately going to make my calling experience better. If it’s done right I will *want* to make my calls through the cloud and it won’t be about saving money at all.

More … http://www.shaiberger.com
Adrian

September 26th, 2007 at 10:40 am

To whom it may concern: you can turn away from the screen during the call - nothing’s for nothing and if concerned about privacy then meet the other person physically face-to-face… you think things are private on Skype or a cell-phone network ..this is would be no different in my mind.
JoergK

September 27th, 2007 at 12:17 am

At the risk of reopening the ‘who-cloned-who’ discussion: take the German site http://www.peterzahlt.de, which is a similar, but less privacy-intrusive service. All you do is enter calling and receiving tel numbers and enter two basic demographics (callers gender and age) and you can call pretty much world wide - there is a long list of countries. Two restrictions: calls will be cut off after 30mins (but you can reconnect straight after) and during the call, you’ll see ads on your computer. Most people would be ok with this, since you can either switch on your screen saver or walk away with your cordless phone. But you can’t close the site - the call will be cut off - obviously. In the US, even cell networks are included. One drawback for you guys across the pond: the site is only in German for now. I’ve heard of capacity problems, but appearantly they are upgrading their servers.
dan

September 27th, 2007 at 8:11 pm

bear in mind they will likely drop cookies on your machine during the call to dig into deeper profiling. combine that with conversational elements, and evaluating your response to served ads and you have a real adbotvoicespy.com machine. while the technology may be neat, it has no commercial benefit to folks wanting to making free phone calls. lets be clear here, voice is nearly free here in the US already. So the target is? people that can’t afford 2 cents per minute? that just the market every advertiser wants to go after, well pizza shops and trailer parks